Dave Romanik
Dave Romanik was born in Milwaukee in 1922, the child of Russian Jewish immigrants. His mother was born in Odessa and his father in Ekaterinoslav, and they knew each other in Russia before coming to the United States around 1907 to 1909. Married when his mother was just fourteen, the young couple lived for six years with his paternal grandparents as part of their marriage agreement. Dave grew up amid the Great Depression, when his father, a lifelong barber, struggled to make ends meet. The family lost their home and lived in the back of the barbershop, dividing rooms with hung sheets, while his mother worked overnight as a waitress to keep the household going.
Yiddish was the language of Dave's home, and he recalled fondly a grandfather who worked as a blacksmith and once koshered the family silverware in his forge for Passover. He attended William T. Sherman grammar school and Washington High School, where he played varsity football and belonged to a group of friends who called themselves the Gladiators, active in sports through the Jewish Community Center. After high school he went to work at Allis-Chalmers as a machinist apprentice. When the war came he enlisted, serving from 1942 to 1946 as an electrical specialist and instructor, and by chance was spared overseas deployment when V-J Day suspended his orders.
Dave met Jerry in August 1940 and married her in 1945. After the war the couple raised two sons, one born in 1948, and lived in Leavenworth, Kansas, where Dave ran a war surplus business that later became a men's shop. Around 1972 he came to Texas to work for the Woollens family in Corsicana before settling in the Dallas area. He and Jerry were among thirteen families who founded a synagogue, of which he served as first president and which grew to some 500 families. Looking back at 92, Dave reflected warmly on his family, including grandchildren pursuing careers in medicine and law, and on a lifetime spanning the Depression, World War Two, and the Kennedy assassination.
Full Transcript
Dave 1922 Milwaukee correct let's go back to in your little boy what can you tell me growing up well growing up shortly after I was born maybe about seven eight years later we hit the Great Depression and my dad was a barber was a barber all of his life and it was a tough going where people today wouldn't believe that when you found a piece of cardboard on the on the road you took it home so your your dad could make a in Seoul for your shoes or went to my mother went to the barbershop to the butcher shops and you got soup bones and
you didn't have to pay for them and you scrape what meet you could offer there for the protein and the meat probably the worst experience that I can imagine at that age the folks lost the home and they moved into the back end of the barber shop and they strung wires and hung sheets that we had a bedroom for my brother sister myself my mother had a kitchen the folks had a little bedroom for themselves and that lasted a lot of year and we finally got back on our feet and bat whoo Becca home were you aware of the hardships that I know no this
was just everyday normal life yes yes it's you saw so much of it around you and why it didn't sink in I still don't know now other than my mother was a very loving woman and I know she protect us a lot of ways probably another thing very great my mother went to work as a waitress in in the restaurant and she would go to work at ten in the evening work all night and come back by seven in the morning to get us off to school get my dad off to work and then she went to bed and she was still up to make
dinner for us and make sure we went to bed then she went to work that was a tough about four years five years your grandparents do you remember them at all oh yes my my grandfather was at our wedding in 1945 my grandmother the only thing I remember about her that she rolled she ruled with an iron hand the way I guess most older Jewish women did at that time what did your grandfather do for a living he was a blacksmith and I now you bring this up and so many things come come to mind I must have been about nine ten years old and
I screwed on a blacksmith shop with him and Passover was coming and he picked up all of these silverware in the house brought it down to the broader down to the shop started up the Forge and got piece of metal white-hot and which was the coast through howdy Costard there they're sober were then and he standing there and he says do it goon sameer staff clacking dancing and I took off like a like a bean ran on home David come to me I've got to Kashi your tongue before he did it to the TV thing and Yiddish was smokin in the house primarily I think
i learned Yiddish before English but when the folks wanted to talk they spoke Russian and we never lived her I never did learn Russian you know not know where your parents born in this country no mostly from from from Russia my mother was born Odessa my dad was born in Ekaterina slough and they came here i think around now there's one part that I'm sorry that I never dwelled any deeper i would say around nineteen oh seven eight or nine in that area and there was no that they know each other before they came here oh yeah they knew each other in in Russia but
when they got here the my mother was the youngest and they kept bouncing her she had two sisters were already married they went to that home for a while and went to another home from night while they had to uncle up in Canada and when he finally came back the court stepped in and my mother became a ward of the court and this goes back so many years and she met my dad and my mother was 14 years old and they got married and I used to tease her that I was born 10 months later and she says what did I know I was 14
years old but it was a good life it was not enough time with their parents or it was they came with my my grandfather was here already and he had how they made the arrangement that they got the four kids and my grandmother back to the country here back to the states and then they were all together and did they settle in Milwaukee they settled in Milwaukee I guess because my grandfather was a on the maternal side was a machinist and he worked with one of the big factories in Milwaukee and had a good job and but unfortunately he was killed or died because of
a industrial accident where he got his arm caught in a machine and they dragged him into the Machine and killed him tell me about your grandmother my grandmother was a oh if she was about maybe five foot 25 foot one really roly-poly good spirits all the time look I had to live in the house with them because I was part of the marriage agreement with the judge that my mother my mother and dad had to live with his parents until my mother reached her majority so we were there six years and literally grew up with her Q and it was I want to say a
typical Jewish home that I know and I had two uncles that lived in the house with us that would I had three uncles they all pharmacists brothers of my dad my dad turned out to be a barber that's what he wanted and we the whole family had a terrific sense of humor and when we got married Jerry didn't know what the woods humor meant from her family I'm stepping on her toes a little bit how when you were young did you guys ever take a trip down to Chicago 1933 to the World's Fair what was that one I don't remember a whole lot i got
tired I didn't sleep all that night because they're going to be my first train ride and we got down there and by mid-afternoon I was so tired my dad was carrying most of the time and but i do remember going and falling asleep on the train coming back the walkie what do you do for fun is a little kid growing up in this in the in wisconsin and we used to do that on a sunday on a sunday morning my folks never owned an automobile and one of her sisters their family had no oil and they were very close they would set up a map
of Milwaukee County in the basement they throw a dart and that's a link we would go to enter a lot of legs he go to at that time and it was a big picnic is just about every every Sunday what was the grammar school you went to william t Sherman I remember that and that wasn't that far from home which reminded me of something I had a lot of friend a lot of good friends but we were living behind the barber shop at the time and I didn't want anybody know I guess I was ashamed that I would not go directly home I would take
another route home so my friends didn't know where I was going for the house at home not that it ever get better than ever change oh yeah oh yeah yeah and then we started our life all over again high school where was that in Milwaukee Washington hi I was a jock for a string varsity football the jewish community center there we had a group of fellows we called ourselves the gladiators and we participated in all of the sports and we had one member one gladiator that excelled in swimming or track or whatever basketball and that was from primary lifestyle also there was a Jewish fraternity
which was really outlawed in Milwaukee but there were a lot of them we had a Jewish High School fraternity and that was our social life the dances and the dates and everything else now your mom was so young an age when she had you was that ever saw an issue as you got older I mean was she tough on you no no she was too easy on me when I was in high school I went shopping with this is an incident that comes to mind as she went to look for lingerie and the old Schuster's store in Milwaukee and I stood any I'll and she
went into the lingerie and the sales associate came over said your husband can come into if you watch too that's when I said mom side to go home after high school was it on the college or into the service uh it wasn't on to college I went to work and I went to work for allis-chalmers in Milwaukee and I was a machinist apprentice and I was in rock crusher division the when the war broke out the Navy was in our shop almost the next day and they took my machine away it was only two of us working on that and 12 hour shifts they turned
it into a machine that made turban housings for the Navy and when the war broke out I hadn't registered at that time you didn't have to register for the draft until you're 20 and I hadn't registered yet and it took me five months to convince my mother and dad to sign my enlistment papers so that I go in and choose my branch of service and what I wanted to do and when I went back and told my bosses that L shall bers they said well you're leaving a machine my my draft board said you'll be exempt until we run out of fellows your age and
then we have to take you and I went back to my boss is that and I enlisted about a week after that time ok and you were in the service for years from 42 and kill 46 ok so this is wartime oh this was working they did not have to see action were worried I went to one school and they made me indestructible Intuit made me instructor went to a third school it made me an instructor and when I got into a group and a squadron I had surgery and it kept they took me out of that group I was an electrical specialist and that
group went over seas and I couldn't go with him so I went into another group and started training all over again the day I was supposed to leave they declared v-j day and all the orders were suspended so I guess I was lucky and yet it's a funny feeling I mean all of my friends went on everything and Here I am enlisted early to go and never work when did you meet you I met Jerry in 1940 August fourth or six August fourth I'm being coached here and then why don't you guys get married in 1945 ok but during that interim physically we saw each
other for 10 days every time I was stationed in the western part of the United States Union Pacific which is Omaha's headquarter we went through there and I got off and spent a couple days with her and then went home now the war ends you come back home so what are you going to do were you guys going to settle down uh we settle down in Milwaukee and I went back to work trails Chalmers and then the decision came for school and I thought hard and long about that Jerry did also and I still say it's one of the biggest mistakes I ever made my
life not to go back to school on the GI Bill and I guess which was in just embedded in me the old country father you have a family you're married that's who you take care of and it still was a big deal the only other thing I feel was a big mistake I love the military I wanted to stay in we had a big fight and I lost what brought you to Dallas a job when was this 19 it's about 40 years ago by 1972 know is that a culture change or chakra me know down here I went to work for the woollens family in
corsicana we had to live there first and that was not a culture change that was an Orthodox Jewish family also but when you were hired by them and you proved yourself you became a family member the family not an employee of the business and they're super super people your boys they were born up in Milwaukee or down here my boys were born in Leavenworth outside the fort in Kansas in Kansas is when you were in the service that no I we're outside service by then my oldest boy was born in nineteen forty eight and my youngest also was born in love with which we used
to get a lot of teasing about that refrig back home so now what were you doing in Kansas then in level in leverett I was in the war assets business buying Irene navy war surplus and selling it and then we turned it when we could get that anymore we turned it into a men's men shop did you guys have an involvement with the Jewish community in Dallas we were one of 13 families that started aren't yemek which is now on tottori I was the first president of JM x Jerry was had 13 families to work with and try to get the congregation built and today
it's up to 500 families and we're still very active in the synagogue now your lifetime was it an invention that came along that you want wow how do we ever get along without that every day I saw a book things we don't need anymore and in the book I remember a few of them one was a the engineer used to use a slide rule yochi anymore fountain pens used to have a bladder in them you see a few but not that many I still can't wrap my head around the kindle how you can order kindle and that thing comes through the air in the kindle
and you could read it i read so much of that it's just beyond me just beyond ria you remember getting your first car yeah when was that it was when I got out of service it was a 1940 chevrolet would you pay for it well i bought a brand-new and shortly after that and i paid nine hundred and seventy-eight dollars for brand new car brand new car it's changed a little bit that's order the big changes right now in your lifetime you've lived through so many remarkable events and talked about the Great Depression obviously World War 2 the President Kennedy assassination the moon landing something
good in 1969 for the first time of course the tragedy of 911 was there something on the national scene that really stood out in your mind you go I know exactly where I was the day it happened Oh Kennedy's assassination yes I was on it I was in an elevator and they were piping in music no and he stopped it and they came that and what time I got to the office at I mean everybody was shocked I wound up I'll say one thing and that be specific but there is so much I feel that at my age at 92 I try not to be
cynical what I see happening now in what I saw happening then the wars I don't comb or the police action I mean the war I was in as the war that we won the police actions are still going on and the cynicism comes from how how the people in Washington our representatives can think that they can tailor over governments that have been for 2,000 years just as a democracy and you're going to jump look what happens David you and Jerry have the two boys and four grandkids what advice does grandpa have for the next generation well my grandkids are well into their into their careers
my my my youngest son Ron is a neural neuropsychiatrist my oldest son who 67 now he had a stroke when he was 58 and he had a hard time getting a job and everything else and but both of them they're hard workers my grandchildren I have a granddaughter now that has her MD I've got a grandson that is a lawyer they're all well onto their careers and it's the same thing I mean look at you know the parents are the product of their parents and they will be the product of us unless they want to change things and think they can do it better great
job man thanks for doing this today oh my pleasure how to enjoy me every minute of it